How fierce is job competition?

[lalala]

Hi all, please pardon me for asking another stupid question (in title). So I am close to making a decision of either staying in engineering research / moving to mfe. And I will just be very frank, yes, money is important to me now. The main reason I don't feel like staying in engineering is also because of its stagnant pay and high living cost here. I don't need millions, but after forking out around 100k USD, I would expect something like 80-120k/year. I have been seeing this number on placement info of many unis.

Any comments? It seems securing a job nowadays is so tough there... I should assume admission into top programs like Toronto / Oxford / Columbia is not a problem. As Andy pointed out long ago, I am not asking about how good the field will be in future. Just want to get a sense of job competition in the field now. Really need advices before making final decision... Any similar threads before?

I am considering Toronto (kinda my first preference) and London too, NYC seems to be too tough for me to survive. Anyone know if my aim is reasonable in Toronto? Long term wise I prefer to move back to Asia. Are top Canadian/UK degrees well recognized in Asia? I am looking at HK/SG/China. FYI, I dropped my previous idea of going actuarial because of the long route.

 

[Connor]

I have always seen job competition in finance as fierce especially in financial centers (NY, London, Tokyo, etc) and I think with the slowdown it has only become more fierce.

You shouldn't go the quant route if the potential for high pay is the only thing you like about it. Based on what you have said, you seem unsure what you want to do with your career. Engineering, finance, actuarial?

If the only reason you are unhappy with engineering is stagnant pay and the high living cost where you are then move. Have you considered doing a graduate engineering degree?

 

[dstefan]

Very fierce, although the top people will fare well.

 

[Ken Abbott]

Don't do it for the money. You'll find yourself in competition with people who really like what they do. They'll always be willing to put in a little more effort.

 

[Joy Pathak]

I think on one of the threads here I saw someone say that for a trader position at his bank they got over 10K applications.

 

[TraderJoe]

Depends on whether you need visa sponsorship. For USA citizens, they are only 20% of the MFE class and the companies will prefer to hire them first before sponsoring the work permit for the international students. Some schools like CMU, Berkeley, and Baruch are having success in getting the international students placed. For most schools, it is quite tough for the international students to find a company to sponsor their work permit.

 

[MSFHQ]

I would expect job competition to be incredibly fierce. Things are still touch and go with the labor market and there are a lot of well qualified finance individuals that you will be competing with. If you need sponsorship things will be even tougher.

 

[dstefan]

Depends on whether you need visa sponsorship. For USA citizens, they are only 20% of the MFE class and the companies will prefer to hire them first before sponsoring the work permit for the international students. Some schools like CMU, Berkeley, and Baruch are having success in getting the international students placed. For most schools, it is quite tough for the international students to find a company to sponsor their work permit.

By the standards of other industries, the finance industry is one of the most accommodating to non-US resident candidates. Big banks have longstanding experience with work visas, and a good part of the current workforce in quantitative finance entered the industry on a work visa, so people are educated in these matters, and possibly sympathetic.

That said, you have to be good enough for the company to need to hire you.

 

[lalala]

Thanks all for the fast response, Connor in particular for giving me guidance since my first post here

Just to make things clear, I don't mean that $ is all for me. So I am about to finish my master in Singapore, and I am kinda looking for a good career direction to go into. Certainly it has to be something that I like, which are math/quantitative stuffs+coding. In fact, I have academic interest in quant, or I feel good about the field. And if I compare it with engineering/IT, it gives me a better fit with my long term plan of coming back to East/South East Asia such as Singapore and Hong Kong. If I want to provide my parents with a good life here, finance is still "a lot" better than engineering. And after all, it doesn't mean that I am giving up my passion, I just apply them in a different domain. And quant career kinda fits my aim of being "expert" in something, I think I am more suitable to be a specialist. Risk management is appealing to me.

FYI, my research job here deals with tonnes of math, models, machine learning stuffs everyday, and codes. Locality sensitive hashing (Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) Home Page) where people make linear search in near neighbour problem into sublinear with theoretical support, support vector machine, kernel, optimization, multiple modal estimation... Perhaps the main difference is that publication/paper is more important here:D

So after the long thinking process, I am kinda close to making a decision, and that's where I am now, hope this clears some doubts. Some how I just want to know where my 100K USD for MFE can bring me to... Yeap

Thanks Connor for pointing out graduate engineering, but sadly, the answer is negative. I think engineering is still not well valued in Asia. In fact, the routes for degree holders are much wider than postgrads here. I am in similar situation now Well, Singapore is not that bad, I still can survive now but housing is getting more and more expensive because of limited land. Similar to HK...

Sorry but I am just curious then, what are the general motivations for people to go quant? I guess there is nothing wrong to love $ here? Haha, I don't need a lot, at most a long term job / field with good pay.